The BBC has severed its nine-decade relationship with the Met Office:

The last bulletin presented by the Met Office will be broadcast in October 2016, 94 years after the first, in November 1922.

Bill Giles, who led the Met Office’s team of BBC forecasters from 1983 to 2000, was among those in shock at the decision. “It’s a hell of a shame. It’s the end of an era,” he said.

The loss of the contract, worth an estimated £3m a year, was confirmed by the Met Office, which said: “We’re disappointed to hear that we won’t be supplying weather presenters and graphics to the BBC in the future.”

It’s not quite as momentous as the break up of the Hitler/Stalin pact, perhaps. But getting there. The two organisations have, after all, until now been the staunchest of allies in the ideological struggle to gull the world into believing that normal and natural changes in the weather somehow represent the most cataclysmic threat of our age.

That’ll be why, for example, when BBC Radio 4 ran an unflattering portrait of the Met Office last month, one of the most vigorous protests came from the BBC’s House Climate Alarmist Roger Harrabin.

And why, a few years ago, when I debated climate change on a BBC Radio 5 Live news programme, I was surprised to find the show’s weather forecaster (an employee of the Met Office, not the BBC) chipping in, uninvited, their tuppenny ha’penny’s worth about what a terrible threat they thought global warming was and how completely wrong I was.

These climate alarmists, they hunt in packs: when it comes to the dissemination of global warming propaganda, the BBC is the Met Office is the Royal Society is NASA GISS is the Vatican is NOAA is the Guardian is the Sierra Club is Tom Steyer’s NextGen climate fund. They all sing from the same bile green hymn sheet.

Naturally there is now much speculation among the climate righteous that it is all part of a terrible conspiracy against the Met Office, orchestrated by right-wing deniers.

That, roughly, is the tenor of this news piece in the Independent.

I wish it were so. It would be truly fantastic to think that the BBC had finally recognised the fundamental problem with the Met Office: that the once-distinguished meteorological organisation that helped make the D-Day landings possible has been hijacked by climate alarmists, starting with its politicisation in 1990 under its eco-alarmist chief Sir John Houghton.

But I suspect the real reason, unfortunately, is much more prosaic.

The BBC indicated yesterday that money was a major reason for its shock decision — which means its forecasts may in future be provided by a private company, possibly with foreign owners. The Corporation had been paying £30 million a year for its forecasts from the Met Office. Anyone who wishes the BBC to slim down must hope that its future supplier will be a great deal cheaper.

Still, if you can’t get Al Capone on murder and racketeering, get him on tax evasion, eh?